


Lent

by a_t_rain



Category: 16th & 17th Century CE RPF, 16th Century CE RPF, Elizabethan and Jacobean Theatre & Literature RPF, Shakespeare RPF
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Gender Issues, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:44:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3387269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lent, 1599.  William Shakespeare visits Stratford and reads trashy 16th-century fiction with his daughters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lent

**Author's Note:**

> _The Miseries of Mavillia_ is a real book by Nicholas Breton; italicized passages are actual quotations (except the ones that are quotations from the Geneva Bible -- I trust that most people will not have much difficulty telling the difference). I've also borrowed phrasing from the Geneva Bible's version of the parable of the talents, which is rather different from the KJV.
> 
> 1599 is perhaps a little early for Shakespeare to be living with the Mountjoy family, but I figure _he_ played fast and loose with historical timelines all the time, so why can't I?

Will means, as always, to leave before dawn on Ash Wednesday and ride hard enough to reach Oxford by nightfall, and home on Thursday evening. In theory it can be done; his horse is good, and he is not too old to travel all day. In practice the Shrove-Tuesday revels at court go on very late, growing wilder and wilder until the stroke of midnight sends them all stumbling to bed, and as always he drinks far too much after the new play is over (it is called _As You Like It_ , and they like it very well), and wakes late in the morning with a headache.

Mistress Mountjoy has made him an excellent omelet with cheese and herbs; he is not really sure whether it is a late breakfast or an early dinner, but he eats heartily, and feels much better afterward. Lent is no great penance in a Frenchwoman’s house, which is another reason why he never _does_ leave as early as he means to. Besides, Mistress Mountjoy wants to hear what the ladies are wearing at court and how the queen looked, and her daughter Mary coaxes him into showing her the steps to the new dance (which he is sure she means to run off and teach to Stephen the apprentice – for it is already obvious, to everyone except Mountjoy _père_ , that the wind lies in _that_ corner).

So he does not leave London until nearly midday, and comes only as far as Wycombe that night, and to Woodstock the next evening. There was a time when he preferred to lie at Oxford, thinking of the day when he would visit his son there; that time is past. Well, God is above all, and children, like everything else we think is ours, are but lent to us for a time. _Lent_ : his mind plays with the word for a mile or two, the long habit of a man who makes a living by his wit. But how bitter the day when the loan is called in.

It is raw cold weather, though the days are longer than when he last made this journey at Advent. When he returns, he thinks, the trees will be covered in a fine mist of green, and the daffodils will be in bloom; but for now the world is bleak, bare, and muddy, as if nature herself were observing the season of penitence.

The third day brings him to Stratford, under lowering clouds. His daughters and Alice the maid are pulling the laundry from the clotheslines before the rain begins. Judith turns and shouts, “Father’s here!” and drops a bundle of bedsheets onto the sodden ground as she runs to meet him. Susanna lingers long enough to help Alice gather them up, and then rushes after her sister. He kisses them both; and Judith falls to rubbing down the horse, which would be very helpful if she were not using a handful of freshly-washed laundry to do it.

He is home.

* * *

He has left his papers and ink in his chamber at the Mountjoys’ house in London, having promised Nan that he would do no play-making during Lent. It is hard, harder than his wife understands; the lines of verse are singing in his head, and it is a special kind of agony to be unable to take up a pen, and to try to commit them to memory before he can lose them. But, as Nan has never objected to trying for another child during Lent, it seems prudent to honor her scruples in all other respects.

“What are you writing now, Father?” Susanna asks, as Alice serves them with a Lenten pie made from leeks and mushrooms.

Nan frowns across the table, as if even _speaking_ about plays were a violation of their agreement; but he ignores her.

“ _The History of King Henry the Fifth_.”

“Oh, _history_ ,” says Judith. “I do not like history. There are never any girls in it; or when there are, they have almost nothing to do.”

“The Queen was a girl once,” says Susanna. “I think her life would make a good play, if only such a thing were allowed.”

“Why, your father cannot write a play about the Queen,” says Alice, genuinely shocked. “It would be like writing one about _God_.”

There had been plays about God, when he was a boy; his father had taken the family to Coventry once at Whitsunday. He remembers seeing King Herod come out roaring, accompanied by a great crash of trumpets and drums. He had asked his father if he could not play Herod when he was grown, and Father had laughed, and said perhaps, if he joined the Shearmen and Taylors’ guild, but had he not rather be a glovemaker? That was in the days when his father used to laugh, before he had his troubles.

Alice, who is only a little older than his daughters, will not remember those plays. His own younger brothers and sister do not remember. The time is past when a play could be an offering to the Lord.

Will takes a bite of the pie; his wife is really a very good cook, as gifted in her English way as Mistress Mountjoy is in the French style. It isn’t really the dread of Lenten fare at home that makes him want to linger in London. It is other things: the way he feels guilty even whistling the tunes from the comedy they played at Shrove-tide, the disapproving stares of the Puritans among their neighbors. His money is as good in Stratford as it is in London, but they all know too well how he made it. To their minds, he is no better than a mountebank: trading in vanity, persuading others to give up their coin in exchange for airy nothings spun out of wit and laughter and invention.

* * *

After supper, Alice scrapes the trenchers and Will’s wife and daughters sit by the fire, busy at their sewing. Will goes out to visit his brother Dick, and returns to find Nan already gone to bed and the girls still gathered by the hearth, no longer the picture of industry. Judith and Alice are making toasted cheese, chattering and giggling; Susanna has turned her back to the fire, so as to get the best light, and is reading from the family Bible. This strikes Will as odd, for he has brought her several new books from London, along with the pocket-knife Judith has asked for and some new gloves for Nan. He remembers now that Susanna thanked him, but more gravely and soberly than she usually does when he brings her books.

Judith and Alice go to the cellar for apples (and, at Will’s request, a pint of ale), with rather more noise than necessary. He takes advantage of their absence to ask Susanna whether her mother has extracted any promise from her concerning books.

“Aye, she says that I waste too much time in reading and such foolishness, and I ought not to touch books until Easter. She excepted the Bible, and other improving works.”

“Hast given thy word?”

“I have.”

“Thou must not break it, then,” he says reluctantly.

“No, I would not. Besides, she is right; I _do_ waste time in idleness, and I _am_ over-fond of books.”

There is no rebellion in his older daughter’s voice; nor has he caught even a shadow of hope in her eyes that he might countermand Nan’s instructions. He knows, also, that she would not have argued with her mother, and would not for the world have pointed out an inconsistency that Judith would have pounced upon at once: when their brother was alive, Nan had spent countless hours nagging him to mind his book. How could an activity that was commendable in a boy be idle and foolish in a girl?

“Well, ‘tis not long till Easter, and I will keep thy fast from books with thee.” He speaks cheerfully, suppressing a disappointment that is purely selfish; he will be back in London at Easter, and he would have _liked_ talking over Chapman’s translation of the _Iliad_ with Susanna. “For my part, I have made a promise to her too.”

“I know, Father.” He has made the same promise these three years.

“Thou hast read very far in the Bible. What think’st thou of it?”

A sly smile plays about Susanna’s lips. “There are some very curious stories in it. I wonder what Mother would say if she knew of them?”

Will laughs.

“If _you_ were to write a play from the Bible, what story would you choose?”

He considers the question. There _have_ been a few Biblical plays in London – _Nebuchadnezzar_ , at the Rose, was liked very well – though it is a great deal of trouble to get them licensed, and for his part he has never been tempted to try. One is generally safest with material from the books of history; Judges, perhaps, or Kings.

“Jephthah and his daughter,” he says at last.

Susanna laughs. “Why, Father! Which of us do you intend to sacrifice?”

“It is not like that.” This is a thing that people, even those who are poets themselves, almost always get wrong about play-making. “We do not write our lives; that is not what people come to the theaters to see. We write stories about people who are long dead, or who never were. That is altogether more exciting.”

“I am glad of _that_ ,” says Susanna, still laughing. “I do not think that I should like to be in a play. Judith might not mind, so long as it were a comedy.”

There is a flurry of giggling from the cellar stairs, and Judith and Alice burst into the room, putting an end to private chat.

Much later, after even Susanna has gone to bed, he sits by the fire thinking of Jephthah and his daughter, thinking of the impossible things parents ask of their children, and the piety which makes the children obey.

_... And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth to the Lord, do with me as thou hast promised..._

_Also she said unto her father, Do thus much for me: suffer me two months, that I may go unto the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows._

_And he said, Go: and he sent her away two months: so she went with her companions, and lamented her virginity upon the mountains._

What, he wonders, did she think about upon the mountains?

Dimly, the story of Jephthah’s daughter takes shape in his mind: she will be afraid, and at the same time afraid of being afraid; she will know that the end can be delayed but cannot be changed; and yet it will cross her mind that she might run far away and never return. But this would be a betrayal not only of her father but of God. She will have to be a certain sort of person. One who can – almost – persuade herself that death is better than life; and yet one who wavers, and asks for two months’ grace. A thinker. One who can think herself almost into paralysis.

_And after the end of two months, she turned again unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed, and she had known no man._

Perhaps there was a man who loved her, one who had not her strength of character; Will imagines him, perhaps, committing suicide during her absence, and her returning to find him dead.

Unexpectedly, Jephthah’s daughter has begun to interest him very much. But _how_ does one make two months of lamenting virginity upon the mountains interesting to a theatrical audience? That is always the problem.

He might do something with the companions. She will have one true friend and two false ones (false how? perhaps they are spies sent to make sure she does not turn and run?) There cannot be any more, for the company has only four boy actors. And little Jack, the newest apprentice, will not be up to more than the simplest of speeches. _That_ is the practical difficulty with writing stories about girls.

Besides, he has not written a tragedy these three years. The world has seemed too much freighted with sadness already, and Will has had no will to add to its load. He has brought Prince Hal to triumphant manhood, and written a triad of glittering comedies, each one wittier than the last. He has all but promised his company a tragedy of Caesar and Brutus, and has not yet been able to bring himself to set pen to paper; he does not need to be distracted with Jephthah’s daughter now.

* * *

It rains on the following day, and Judith runs off to go fishing with the Quiney boys, neglecting the housework. She returns bright-eyed and soaking wet, her new shoes and stockings muddied. Nan scolds her, though not very convincingly, since she comes back with a fine string of perch, and there is nothing else for supper but poor-john. Judith scales and guts the fish expertly with her new knife, and Nan rolls them in flour and fries them in butter. They are heaped on a platter, golden and tempting, by the time Will returns from calling at his parents’ house.

Nan cooks plainly during Lent, but never _badly_ ; in her mind, it would be as sinful to spoil good fish as it would be to spend self-indulgent hours crafting a sauce to please the palate. Will thinks about this. He wonders what his wife would say if he tried to argue that it were as sinful to spoil good words by failing to write them down in time, leaving them to be whirled away with the wind. For was not language given to man in Eden? He thinks of borrowing Susanna’s Bible to see if this is so, but she does not take it down from the shelf that day.

The next day is Sunday; Susanna reads briefly to the family after dinner, and then sets the Bible by. On Monday she sits darning stockings and underclothes, and Will, for his part, fits new hinges to the cabinets and mends the broken chair. He has always been clever at carpentry, which is a useful skill for a player.

“I marvel thou canst keep thy fast from books so well,” he says at last.

“‘Tis not so very hard.” Susanna looks searchingly at him for a moment and then decides to proceed. “I have not told you that Judith has a book.”

“ _Judith_ has a book?”

“She bought it from a peddler in Warwick on market-day. And Mother did not think to forbid her from reading, nor from reading it to me.”

No, of course Nan would not have thought to do that. Judith has never shown any great inclination for reading before, and according to Nan’s ideas of religion – to the extent that she has any very coherent ones – there is no particular virtue in abstaining from something one does not want to do in the first place.

“‘Tis called _The Miseries of Mavillia, the Most Unfortunate Lady that Ever Lived_. All the girls in Stratford are reading it.”

“Is it a good book?”

“No, not at all. But it is very exciting and tragical, all the same.” Susanna looks out the window and turns back to her father, evidently satisfied that he will not tell their secrets. “The sky will be clear tonight, and the moon is half-full. You may come and hear some of it tonight in the middle gable, if you will.”

* * *

Alice is the only person who sleeps in the gable, but it is plain to see that all three girls are at home there. There is a dish of dried fruit and almonds on top of the great chest, and a flask of strong cider hidden behind it (Judith takes it out and passes it around); there are blankets and cushions aplenty, and the girls sprawl or curl on the floor, according to their custom. There is also a shelf of books, from which Judith takes _The Miseries of Mavillia_.

The other books include Lyly’s Latin grammar, the _Aeneid_ , and the _Metamorphoses_ , as well as the volume of Plautus that he bought for Hamnet, the very last time he saw his son alive. Judith, he thinks, must have kept them as a memento of her twin brother – but no, when he moves his candle nearer, he sees that the Plautus has been read, and read often. Susanna, then. He catches his breath, perceiving that his older daughter is much, much cleverer than even he has realized.

Mavillia, the girls explain, was a nobly-born girl in a far country who was orphaned and kidnapped by an invading army; subsequently, she has been brought up by an unkind laundress, waylaid by murderous bandits, menaced by a wild boar who killed her beloved page, and taken in by a couple who have stolen her money and treated her as a servant. It is at this point that they have left off, and Judith takes the book up to read.

Judith has never been a great reader. At an age when Susanna and Hamnet could read fluently, she was still mixing up her letters and getting whole words backward or out of their proper place, and unlike her sister, she never begged to have writing lessons with the boys when they were at school. It is a measure of her interest in Mavillia’s misadventures that she seems to have mastered the written word at last. Stumbling over only a few words, she reels off a tiresome list of Mavillia’s daily duties.

_To spin, to reel, to card, to knit, to wash bucks, and by hand brew, bake, make malt, reap, bind sheaves, weed in the garden, milk, serve hogs, make clean their houses within doors, make beds, sweep filthy houses, rub dirty rags, beat out the old coverlets, draw up old holes; then to the kitchen, turn the spit, although it was seldom, for we had not roast meats often; then scour pots, wash dishes, fetch in wood, make a fire, scald milk pans, wash the churn and butter dishes, wring up a cheese clout, set everything in good order ..._

Will can hardly keep from laughing by the time Judith reaches the roast meats, but Alice is deeply affected. “‘Tis so very, very unjust,” she sniffles. “I wonder that Mavillia’s master and mistress could sleep a-nights, after putting her to such hard service.”

“Why,” says Susanna, who also seems more amused than grieved at Mavillia’s troubles, “do not _we_ do all of these things? Except for feeding the hogs, and that is only because we have none.”

“But Mavillia ought to be a fine lady, if she but had her rights,” says Alice.

“And why should _not_ a fine lady be able to work, as well as another?” demands Judith. “Why _should_ it be tragical in her, if it is only expected of us?”

“What knowest _thou_ of work?” Susanna retorts. “Thou art forever going fishing or blackberrying, and leaving Alice and me to do thy share.”

There follows a wide-ranging three-way quarrel, which shifts direction so swiftly that Will is not quite sure who is arguing with whom, and whether it is about the chores, the cruelty of Mavillia’s mistress, or whether Wat Tyler were in the right. (Judith thinks that he was; and also, that someone ought to do the same for women.) It is dissolved, eventually, in cider.

Later, in the watches of the night, he wakes with Nan asleep by his side and his head full of Brutus and Cassius. They are quarreling, and they sound remarkably like his daughters, and he aches to write down every word they are saying, and he cannot. But Brutus and Cassius have come to life for him, and he thinks he may be able to give his fellows the tragedy they want, after all.

* * *

The moon shines all that week, unobscured by clouds, and Mavillia is tried for theft after her wicked master’s death, saved by the testimony of the master’s daughter, and courted by two suitors, one of whom is young and virtuous but poor, and the other poxy, deaf, half-blind, elderly, and repulsive, but very rich. She marries the young man, and – in a surprising plot twist that makes Alice burst into tears – has her nose bitten off by the other.

Will remarks, without thinking, that most ladies who lose their noses do not do so by being as saintly as Mavillia, and is a little troubled to discover that both of his daughters understand the jest at once. Susanna tries to look as if she does not, but her smile betrays her; Judith guffaws. They are growing up.

Judith, he thinks, will be all right. Girls who play boys’ games and neglect their chores are nothing very unusual. His sister Jo was one such, and so was many another sober Stratford housewife. Some never marry, and sit out on their doorsteps smoking pipes all through the long summer evenings, as if they were old men; but they seem happy enough.

Susanna will be more difficult. He will have to find a husband for her who is her equal in mind, and whose own image of himself is not so fragile that he needs a foolish wife to prop him up. A gentleman, preferably with a university education. He begins to run through the list of young gentlemen he knows, and to calculate how much of a dowry such a one is likely to demand in a disadvantageous marriage to a common player’s daughter. He reminds himself that he has become a gentleman too. Arms, like most other things, can be bought and sold, and _this_ common player is very good at buying, selling, investing ... 

The world, he thinks cynically, likes to make a show of despising wealth, and especially people who acquire wealth above their station – he thinks of the description of Mavillia’s old suitor, _yet he will have his purse full of gold to make a brave shew withal, and a fair chain about his neck to set out a filthy body withal_ – and yet, there is not one man in a thousand who truly shuns it.

* * *

The moon has begun to wane; it does not rise until after sunset. Will and the girls gather in the attic for a last evening with Mavillia and stay up until nearly midnight, for soon it will be too dark o’nights to read. By the time the moon waxes full again, it will be just before Easter-tide, and he will be on his way to London in time to prepare for the revels at court.

_Now I being great with child, fell into a trance, and recovered again, I fell to dressing of his wounds, which bleeding sore, and he fainting, I was in no good case to behold. Let this suffice, hitherto I have written the tragical discourse of my unhappy life. Now going to my husband, to see how he fares, I saw that he was left speechless, and I am so weak myself, as that mine eyes do fail me. In hope to go to God, I bid you all farewell._

Alice drenches a handkerchief with her tears. Judith says crossly that this is no good ending, and Mavillia ought to have stabbed her old villain of a suitor when she had the chance, instead of letting her husband and his rival carry on a feud that proved fatal to them both. Susanna looks across the gable at Will, eyes dancing in the moonlight.

Will wonders, idly, whether he could make a play out of the tragical discourse of Mavillia’s unhappy life. He has worked with less promising material before, and made more of it than people thought possible, but the episodic nature of Mavillia’s adventures poses some particular challenges for a dramatist, and it is difficult to see how one would amputate a nose convincingly. (Besides, the stage directions alone would give poor Burbage fits: _exit, pursued by a boar?_ )

And yet, he sees what Alice and Judith and all the other girls in Stratford have found to like in the book, and why even Susanna, who has read widely enough to develop better taste, seems secretly intrigued. It is a book that has a great deal to say about women’s work, the teaching of children and ministering to the sick, even the washing of clothes. He wonders if he can put something of _this_ in a play. The city wives have been flocking to see that play of Tom Heywood’s about Jane Shore, delighted by the new innovation: a history play with a heroine like themselves, only better and kinder. He thinks of Judith’s complaint that there are not enough girls in history, and that they have not enough to do. Perhaps the Lord Chamberlain’s Men need to offer something different from their usual fare to win those city women back. They are a small segment of the audience, but a lucrative one; men will go alone to the theater, but respectable women always bring their husbands, their servants, sometimes their whole brood of children. But would it really be possible to write a play about _laundry?_

* * *

Will’s mind is still playing with the idea of history plays and laundry in church the next day, when he has an unexpected vision of Sir John Falstaff tossed into a river with a heap of greasy clothing. He stifles a laugh, not very successfully; not only his wife, but his _parents_ turn to glare at him, though he is almost five-and-thirty. He steals a glance around Holy Trinity Church: most of his old school-fellows are respectable townsmen, approaching their middle years; others are very grave men indeed, present only as epitaphs and monuments. He, alone of them all, has never lost the schoolboy’s habit of daydreaming when his mind ought to be fixed upon the sermon. Perhaps Stratford is right: he has never properly grown up. He has made playing his work.

He tries to keep his mind on present matters, if not precisely on the _sermon_ , which is not a good one. This church had stained-glass windows and painted walls, once, at a time when God could be praised with color and art and story. Those images are long gone. The pure light of very early spring falls on the parishioners, and on whitewashed walls.

But see: out in the churchyard, the first primroses are blooming; daffodils poke their bright spears out of the earth; the trees are newly clad in pale green and gold and red and white and pink, less brilliant than their autumn colors and yet more varied. Might not God himself, Will muses rebelliously, have some love for color? And when he delivered varied talents unto varied men, did he not intend that they should go and occupy with them and return them double, not that they should hide them in the earth?

He sets aside the idea of the new Falstaff-play – _that_ , he acknowledges, is too profane for church – but he finds himself fitting words to Jephthah’s daughter, finding the pattern of her mind: _if it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since none knows aught of what she leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be..._

In spite of his promise to his wife, he fixes his mind on the words and memorizes them before they can be cast away. They are his offering, the best that he has to give; and he trusts that they will not displease the God who has lent them to him.

**Author's Note:**

> I think it's no accident that the closest thing Shakespeare actually wrote to a gender-swapped Hamlet was _The Rape of Lucrece_ , which is a narrative poem and doesn't raise the problems of casting and action that he struggles with here. I wanted to explore the possibility that Hamlet may have _started off_ as a girl, even if theatrical practicalities ensured that he didn't end up that way.
> 
> Anne Shakespeare's epitaph is a Latin poem written in the voice of one of her daughters. It's usually assumed that the actual author was Susanna's husband, Dr. John Hall, but I think it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it was Susanna herself -- whose own epitaph describes her as being "witty beyond her sex" and as taking after Shakespeare in this respect. ("Witty" in seventeenth-century usage connotes general intelligence as well as verbal dexterity.) Judith is often assumed to have been illiterate, since on the one extant document signed by her, she used a mark rather than signing her name, but estimating female literacy in this era is difficult because it wasn't unusual for girls to be taught to read but not to write -- and Judith's mark looks more like a stylized monogram than the conventional X, which suggests she at least knew her letters. (We do have surviving examples of Susanna's signature; I've chosen here to make Judith dyslexic, because it seemed a plausible explanation for why one daughter might have been taught to write and not the other.)


End file.
